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There is a rumour Sony will be adding PS2 and PS1 games to the service.

You have to wonder if this is their way of testing the technology ready to deliver current gen games in the game way. It would completely remove piracy and all games would be up to date without the need to download patched. It would also tie in with Sony's comment about the PS4 possibly bring the last console. You wouldn't need to keep bring out need hardware generations in the same way if you only needed to develop and upgrade the streaming hardware.

I personally hope this never becomes the standard delivery setup for new games as I want to actually own games I can play for years to come.

Such a setup could also kill future retro generations, unless every game released via stream distribution remained on the service forever, which I doubt would ever happen.

I suppose they are looking at this technology due to the popularity of video streaming such as Netflix.

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If you haven't played a classic game in years, it's never too late to start!

I personally hope this never becomes the standard delivery setup for new games as I want to actually own games I can play for years to come.

Same here, I completely agree with you.

Sadly there is this whole move about getting everything 'on the cloud' for these last ten years now, ease of delivery without needing physical distribution, and control of course.
For one it could help reduced the second hand games market that publishers have been wanting to get rid off for a while now. (every second hand title sold means that a new copy was not sold)

At first I never really saw the harm of having everything digital, I found it rather easy to be honest. But now I am starting to realize how much power it gives certain publishers. Heck a publisher can decide I need to pay a monthly fee in order to play the Single Player games that I have bought from them. (of course they would not do that, it would result in public backlash, but they could have such control then)

If it ever goes that far I am not sure if I will continue to spend money on gaming.
I wonder if it could result in people moving into retro gaming, going back to machines which software is on physical mediums.

Earth is like a 24 hour, Seven days a week Stupidity contest which has been running for centuries.
And every time they are ready to pronounce a winner, a new contender appears on the scene.

* * * *

He has seen half the universe who has not seen the house of pain (Ralph Waldo)

I love digital distribution such as Steam and GOG, because you own the actual games you buy, paying just once and owning forever. You can also download and install locally, and store a local copy if you wish, just in case the service did ever vanish.

With streaming services, I like the idea, but as you say it's completely in the hands of the company running the service. It hasn't happened yet with gaming services, but look at video streaming. Netflix has started to remove films and whole series boxsets from their servers. If I were a subscriber I would be quite mad about this. I thought the whole point of a video streaming service was to ditch your local collection and have it all at the touch of a button. Doesn't seem so now. Looks like you are only allowed to watch what they want you to.

Streaming game services will be exactly the same. They are not going to continue serving remote gaming for a title that only gets played by a few players. What would be the point of utilising the server power to sit waiting most of the time to run a game. Much better to replace it with an alternative people will play.

Equally this is very bad for retro gaming. It might seem amazing to begin with having a large library of PS3 games, and soon PS2 and PS1 games, all served and running remotely. No need for hardware, storing and setting up hardware, or repairing and maintaining hardware. But then the games start vanishing or the service closes and you lose access to the lot.

It would be even worse if EA started a similar service.

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If you haven't played a classic game in years, it's never too late to start!

Bit late with responding but this subject has been on my mind, that as more material such as movies, television, and games, but also books and comic become more 'online' (no more physical copies in any form), that the audience becomes more and more limited by what the studios/publishers allow us to read. Based on what sells the most of course but also material that fits defined standards/parameters.

There is indeed a lot of junk that should have never been made or been published in the first place, pointless pornography or snuff, or political directed material. But under this dissenting voices and material that does not go with conformism or standards could also be prevented.
Not necessarily because of censorship but because the marketing department believes that it would not sell enough to warrant the space and place it gets on the cloud.

For gamers a lot of smaller or different titles could never get any kind of attention because they are too niche, or don't sell well in the allotted time they are given. What if it is a title you happen to like and want to play again after you had to remove it a while back because you needed the space or have bought a new PC or console?

Earth is like a 24 hour, Seven days a week Stupidity contest which has been running for centuries.
And every time they are ready to pronounce a winner, a new contender appears on the scene.

* * * *

He has seen half the universe who has not seen the house of pain (Ralph Waldo)

I think content vanishing from digital distribution is a big concern at the moment. Especially streaming TV and Movie content. A good example of this is the BBC in the UK. I wanted to watch a series, but has missed the first 2 week's episodes. So I downloaded them and then set my sky box to record the rest as they were shown. Problem is the BBC started deleting the episodes after 30 days old, so I never got to see the series and deleted the rest. And the series hadn't been offered for streaming since.

Sky do offer box sets now for most of their content, including all previous series. However there is still no guarantee they will remain available forever. And there are many series still not available.

And for movies, although Sky have 1000s on demand I still keep finding a lot I search for are only available in the Sky store to purchase and not in the on demand store.

Therefore we still need to buy the physical boxsets and movies if we want access indefinitely.

Regarding games, it's not as bad.

Steam doesn't normally remove a game's files/download from their servers. If you have purchased a game, even if it's page vanishes from the actual store the game remains in your library with links to all it's support sections. A recent one I noticed was A-Train 9 v3. Now that v4 has been released the older v3 has been removed from the store. However it was still in my library for download. It's annoying not having access to such game's steam store pages though as you lose the access to details about the games such as screenshot, videos, reviews, publisher and developer info etc.. so that is annoying. Would be better if they kept the store pages but deactivated the purchase section.

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If you haven't played a classic game in years, it's never too late to start!